How police failed to trace Fr Kiiza’s body 10 years on

On June 28, 2007, the parish priest of Kamwenge Parish, Fr Tony Kiiza, went missing at the home of Mr Peter Beyunga, a former district councillor for Kasenda Sub-county, Kyenjojo District.

Fr Kiiza, who was also the chairperson of Kamwenge District Service Commission, arrived at Mr Beyunga’s home in Rwetera late in the night.
The priest had been offered a lift by a motorcyclist who found him walking to his intended destination.

Police detectives investigating the case where told by the motorcyclist, a boda boda rider, that when he met Fr Kiiza, he looked tired and disturbed. The boda boda rider told the police that he had left Fr Kiiza at Beyunga’s home.

According to investigators, Fr Kiiza was expected to spend a night at Mr Beyunga’s and connect to Kampala the next day aboard the early morning bus.
In Kampala, the police found out, the priest was meant to meet with Robert Kyaligonza and Richard Bitature, all residents of Kampala, who owed him Shs7m and had promised to pay him once he reached Kampala.

Disappearance
“Fr Kiiza had been conned so he was under pressure to refund the money he had borrowed (from money lenders in Kamwenge) to repay the money he had lost to conmen,” says one of the detectives who followed the case.

Detectives found out that Fr Kiiza had gone to Mr Beyunga’s home not to meet the man, but his wife, Florence, who detectives found out was ‘very close’ to the priest.
Fr Kiiza reportedly told Mr Beyonga’s wife that there was something sinister going on.
She had apparently promised to bail him out of some debts. The priest was accommodated at the home for the night.

Early the following morning, Mr Beyunga, the host, left for Fort Portal Town where he had urgent business to attend to. He is said to have left with two men who had also spent the night at his home in Rwetera.
According to detectives, Mr Beyunga did not give the police a satisfactory reason why he had to travel to Fort Portal, and left behind the priest who was also travelling in the same direction.

The other issue detectives took interest in was why, even though the priest was said to be a regular guest at the home, Mr Beyunga on this occasion did not bother to check on him before driving away, or better offer him a lift to where he could easily catch the bus.
At around 8am on the fateful day, priests at Kamwenge Parish told detectives that they received a call from Florence, Mr Beyunga’s wife, asking them about the whereabouts of Fr Kiiza.

She was reportedly in panic when she called to ask the other priests whether they had seen Fr Kiiza. According to her, Fr Kiiza was missing.

According to a detective who investigated the matter, someone must have called Florence to tell her about the disappearance of Fr Kiiza, prompting her to make frantic calls to the priests in Kamwenge.

However, in Florence’s statement to the police, she stated that she had checked on the priest at 10am and found that he was not in the room.
The detective says Florence Beyunga kept dodging their questions until they gave up on trying to get her to clarify as to how she had got to know that the priest was missing before 8am to prompt her to make frantic calls to other priests in Kamwenge.
“Whoever called Florence is the one who knows the whereabouts of Fr Kiiza,” one of the detectives says.

But the detectives reportedly did not make much headway in interrogating Florence, especially amid rumours that the two were enjoying a secret affair.
One week after the disappearance of Fr Kiiza, a team of police and private detectives who were investigating the matter came across a freshly dug grave.

They obtained an exhumation order, dug up the grave and extracted the body. It is said that some of the body features fitted those of Fr Kiiza. The body was of a male adult and the police suspected he was about 50 years old at the time of his death, just about the same age at which Fr Kiiza had disappeared.

The body was retrieved and taken to Fort Portal hospital mortuary, from where some samples were extracted for DNA testing at the Government Analytical Laboratory in Kampala. However, the DNA match with that of both Fr Kiiza’s father and mother failed because the body had over decomposed.

A team of pathologists confirmed that the skull belonged to someone of Fr Kiiza’s height, weight and age. From the decomposition, it was clear that it belonged to a man who was killed two months before it was found.

The police did not give up at that. They sought a second opinion at a South African Laboratory but failed to extract the DNA because they lacked the technique.
Two DNA tests were carried out on the body parts but they did not produce a match, forcing the police to seek a second opinion. To the detectives, without Fr Kiiza’s body, it was difficult to find his killers.

In murder trials, one of the ingredients that has to be proved is that a life was lost.
This can only be proved after the body is found with proof that it is of the very person who is the subject of the murder trial.

Working with the diocese of Fort Portal, detectives enlisted the services of a forensic pathologist, who gave them an option to try another forensic laboratory in the United Kingdom that handles complicated DNA cases.
“I collected blood samples from Fr Kiiza’s father and mother and sent them to Cellmarks Forensic, a DNA matching centre in Oxford, UK. Unfortunately even there we got no match,” the pathologist who was hired for the purpose said.

The DNA revealed that the body did not belong to Fr Kiiza but it belonged to a younger man of about 30 years.
The failure of the DNA match left detectives with no clue as to the whereabouts of Fr Kiiza.
Not even demonstration by his parishioners in Kamwenge would push the police to solve Fr Kiiza’s disappearance.

After making no headway, it was just prudent for the police to let the hospital bury the remains of this unidentified male adult. But the police decided otherwise and up to now the remains of the unknown person are still lying at the Fort Portal hospital mortuary.
During the entire course of the investigations, no one came up to claim the dead body, leaving the police to scratch their heads as to who the deceased was.

On August 24, 2007, another decomposing body of a man was found dumped in a bush in Kasenda Sub-county in Kabarole District, a few kilometres from Fort Portal Town. The body, which was dressed only in an underwear, was discovered wrapped in a sack and dumped in the bush. No DNA testing was done on this body.

Though there were claims that Fr Kiiza had travelled to the Democratic Republic of Congo, no effort was made to trace him there.
On January 12, 2010, after failing to find clues on the whereabouts of Fr Kiiza, the police charged Mr Kyaligonza and Mr Bitature, the ones Fr Kiiza was meant to meet with in Kampala, with kidnap with intent to murder Fr Kiiza.
The police alleged that the duo borrowed Shs7m from Fr Kiiza and promised to refund it in four days. However, when the four days elapsed, Fr Kiiza approached the duo demanding for his money.

The suspects are said to have telephoned Fr Kiiza and told him to travel to Kampala and collect the money. On reaching Kampala, the suspects allegedly kidnapped Fr Kiiza and took him to an unknown place.

KEY DATES
June 22, 2009: Western region CID officer, Michael Komunjara told a meeting at Club Afereka in Kamwenge he had received useful information about Fr Kiiza.
April 6, 2010: Director of CID is quoted in the local press telling people a decomposing body exhumed recently did not belong to Fr Kiiza.
January 12, 2010: Robert Kyaligonza and Richard Bitature were accused of kidnapping Fr Kiiza, and were remanded to prison.
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